A Bill permitting pairs of homosexuals to adopt children was passed in the New South Wales lower house of parliament yesterday.

Premier Kristina Keneally said she “consulted her conscience” — then voted for homosexual adoption.

She said, “It’s something that I, not just as a Christian and a Catholic, but as the leader of this state, want to be able to support.”

How about that?

Such churchy-sounding attempts at fence-straddling only earn contempt from both sides of the debate.

* * *

Two of NSW’s three accredited adoption agencies — Anglicare and CatholicCare — threaten to stop providing adoption services if forced to process adoptions by homosexual couples.

The other, UnitingCare, supported the bill, saying it would benefit children etc.

*  Anglicare spokesman, Peter Kell, also trying to please everybody, said, “Anglicare is not seeking to perpetuate and condone discrimination against gay people . . . .”

As one supporting common sense on this issue, it’s a pity he spoils his credibility by apologising for being right.

* The so-called Uniting Church has, of course, got this one all wrong, as is their habit.

The fact that they call themselves a Christian group is confusing, and they should give it up.

* Worst of all is pretend-Catholics who, like Mrs Keneally, “search their consciences” and then decide that they know better than the Church and better than God.

* * *

The Bible consistently says that homosexual relations are wrong.

One famous text in the Book of Leviticus: “You shall not have intercourse with a man as you would with a woman. That is an abomination.” (“Abomination” as in “outrage” or “disgrace”)

The Old Testament also says that people doing such things should be stoned to death – indicating how seriously the Jewish religion regarded such sins.

The New Testament records Jesus stopping some Jews stoning an adulterous woman, thus endorsing more merciful attitudes.

But to the woman he said, “Go, and sin no more.”

He was very strict about sin, but compassionate to sinners who repented.

* * *

Anyway . . . children must be taught that all sex outside of normal marriage is unacceptable.

Living in a household whose adults, by word and example, flout Christian standards . . . .

That is something children must be protected from at all costs.

Each state of Australia has an official motto.

Victoria’s motto is “Peace and Prosperity”.

* * *

Prosperity?

Last week, caretaker-Prime Minister Julia Gillard told the National Press Club, “We have begun building a strong foundation for our future prosperity investing in 21st century infrastructure . . . .”

Clutching desperately at whatever straw might help her survive as PM — her best bet was to talk prosperity . . . .

Australians love being prosperous.

* * *

Peace?

One wonders what kind of peace is Victoria’s motto referring to?

Simply there being no foreign invaders and no blood in the streets?

* You say, “We’re going well. I saw no Chinese/Russian/American soldiers manning roadblocks in town today.” Perhaps not, but did you look at the label inside your shirt? Where was it made?

* You saw no bleeding corpses in the shopping mall? No, but watching TV tonight you’ll see them non-stop — on the news and in what passes for “entertainment”.

* * *

Forget all that.

What matters is internal peace.

Ask your GP how many of his patients have peace of mind? How many live 24/7 at the verge of screaming point?

Ask your children’s teacher how much class time is spent talking about (and to) their Creator.

If God exists, and we ignore him, we’ll never find peace — denying and defying the very Origin of peace.

If God didn’t exist, then nothing but hate and chaos – the opposite of peace — could be possible.

Belief makes the difference.

God created us capable of loving him. That is our purpose. He proved it by entering history himself in the person of Jesus Christ.

That being so, all life lived apart from Christ is a bit of a waste — and the pursuit of prosperity pretty irrelevant.

* * *

If one’s first aim is pleasing God, one will gladly accept prosperity if that’s what God sends.

Or poverty, if he sends that.

The Bible describes God as a “jealous” God.

To please him, we must put him first — as individual persons and, likewise, political parties and governments.

Which makes the notion of separation of Church and State a bad joke.

People voting for Labor or Coalition mostly had some idea what they were voting for.

Those voting for an Independent normally try to find out what kind of a bloke he is.

What about Greens voters? How many of them could name two Greens Party members apart from Bob Brown?

Such voters were voting for somebody – somebody they knew nothing about . . . . somebody, perhaps, with whom they wouldn’t be seen dead in a ditch in real life – somebody whose basic moral ideas they would actually detest.

Bob Brown himself isn’t too sure about some of the characters endorsed by his party — some so politically and personally immature that they almost make him look good.

He is probably quite frightened of them.

And rightly so.

* * *

The Greens want to increase taxes on our major export industries, on all electricity users – and on everybody who dies.

Also to financially damage the Private Health Insurance industry and Catholic schools.

Eventually, also, to close all non-government schools and all Zoos and the one Australian laboratory that can supply radio-active isotopes for use in cancer therapy.

* * *

Already we’ve let the Greens get a stranglehold on Tasmania . . . .

Now they’ll be able to blackmail their way into getting whatever they want in Senate votes.

Yes, the Greens — who represent hardly anybody’s beliefs – got their Senate blackmailing licence thanks to Labor preferences. And their first lower house seat (Melbourne) by means of Liberal preferences.

Thanks chaps.

* * *

While almost no sane person in Australia supports Greens policies, 12 percent voted for them.

Cardinal Pell warned voters against this. So did Perth’s Archbishop Hickey.

Did you hear of any others of Australia’s 41 Catholic bishops doing  likewise?

Neither did I.

* * *

Let this disastrous election be a lesson to us.

Victorians will, in less than three months, have a chance to make the same mistake again.

It is hard to be optimistic.

The Australian Labor Party used to be more or less anti-poker machines.

John Cain, Labor Premier of Victoria in the 1980s, refused to permit them.

But it was Joan Kirner, a Labor Premier succeeding him, who introduced them.

About that time something very nasty happened to the Labor Party . . . .

Current Victorian Premier, Mr Brumby, is no better.

His moves to modify the gambling industry have all been strictly cosmetic.

Nothing has happened that will reduce losses by gamblers.

* * *

In Tasmania it is exactly the same.

The Tasmanian Labor government enjoys a deep and meaningful friendship with Federal Hotels, and has arranged for them to have a monopoly contract at least until 2018.

How interesting, then, that anti-pokies candidate, Andrew Wilkie — running as an independent in the Tasmanian seat of Denison — has just beaten off the Labor candidate and won the seat.

Mr Wilkie has publicly promised that his aim is to make Tasmania “pokies-free”. 

The latest research in Tasmanian shows that one in every two voters knows personally somebody who is a gambling addict.  No wonder the people of Denison were glad to have Andrew Wilkie there to vote for.

Mr Wilkie said yesterday, “$95 million has been lost just on poker machines, just in Tasmania, just in the last five months . . . There’s something like 100,000 problem gamblers in Australia, problem gamblers on poker machines, costing the community something like $5 billion a year . . . .

“If I can get into the House of Representatives, and with Nick Xenophon in the Senate, I think we have an unprecedented opportunity to energise the public debate about poker machines, and bring about some genuine reform nationally,”

                                                                                                * * *                                                       

Yes, the poker machine problem is the same Australia-wide.

Where are the anti-pokies candidates that so many of us want to support?

Will there be a few in the November 27 election in Victoria?

Let’s hope so – and let’s hope they get elected.

Especially in Mildura, which has been picked out by the gambling fraternity as a good source of suckers to bleed white, while fattening the leeches of the big end of town.

Three independent lower house Federal MPs look like holding balance of power in Australia for a while.

Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott and Bob Katter are presenting a list of seven demands to Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott.

Mr Katter explained his motives: “All I’m interested in are the people back home. I’ll be voting for them . . . .”

* * *

He means rural people, like those inhabiting his king-size electorate of Kennedy . . . mainly bush, plus a few towns like Charters Towers, Cloncurry, Innisfail, Mount Isa and Tully.

The question, of course is, what are his back-home people’s real interests?

Rural districts probably do have a few special needs — including a good, fast, publicly-owned, Internet service, plus decentralisation that is more than just a slogan . . . .

* * *

Otherwise, rural people need pretty much what everybody needs:

* everybody needs to live in a country generous in assistance to underdeveloped and disaster-stricken overseas communities – something rarely mentioned during the election campaign.

* everybody needs to live in a country where unborn babies are not aborted.

* everybody needs an environment free of pornography, which implies Internet filtering at service-provider level.

* everybody needs to live in a country that has no casinos.

* everybody needs to live in a country where traditional marriage is respected — and children, with rare exceptions, live together with both their mother and father.

* everybody needs to live in a country whose culture is based on the Catholic Faith.

* everybody needs to live in a country where childcare is the mother’s role – her husband working to support the family financially.

* everybody needs to live in a country whose soldiers are not fighting in Afghanistan or Iraq – whose defence force exists to defend its shores, but not to impose its brand of democracy on others.

* everybody needs to live in a country where unauthorised, boat-smuggled, asylum-seekers are processed offshore.

Australia can best be considered as being two separate countries.

One, east and south of the Great Dividing Range, has a good rainfall and a dense population.

North and west is another country, drier, hotter and sparsely populated.

Much of the dry area is fertile and — with irrigation — could support profitable primary industries and a growing population.

But big business, and our political parties, want Australia’s people crammed into big cities in the higher rainfall regions.

* * *

So, irrigation is reduced stepwise, until farmers walk off the land and the townships they support become ghost towns (or tourist centres — much the same thing).

If that doesn’t destroy rural Australia quickly enough, another (even more outrageous) strategy could be to pipe water AWAY FROM the dry parts into higher rainfall regions.

If that notion had been suggested to the Monty Python Show scriptwriters, they’d have shaken their heads saying, “Too bizarre by far . . . there are limits to what even crazy people will watch.”

Anyway, water is, this day, being pumped out of the Goulburn River in Victoria’s drier north and into Melbourne’s Sugarloaf Reservoir in the wetter south . . . .

* * *

Once upon a time, there existed an Australian Country Party which would have protested against this — and at least extracted some concessions.

But that party self-destructed. Under its new “Nationals” name-tag, it became just one more party favouring “free trade” and, with it, rural decline.

The Greens are worse.

They must keep city-dwellers happy — only city-dwellers will swallow environment-worship of the sentimental, almost pantheistic variety the Greens peddle . . . .

Greenies will always find a threatened species of bird or frog or something to declare at risk so as to stop any venture that looks like promoting decentralised manufacturing and/or agricultural industry.

* * *

The environment does deserve consideration, of course — but there needs to be some sort of balance.

Have you ever heard a politician say anything balanced about the water issue?

It may have happened, but a lot of us missed it.

Perhaps our now-famous “independents” might offer a rational approach. Perhaps, also, the DLP.

Time will tell.